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Some ignore siren as tornado strikes Arkansas hamlet

MENA, Ark. (AP) — The sirens sounded at least four times as the storms drew in, at every corner of the western Arkansas hamlet and in the center of town.

While many took cover immediately Thursday night in the basement of the county courthouse, several funnel clouds passed over the city of 5,700 in the Ouachita Mountains. Other stayed home, only to glance out their windows just in time to see the black funnel descend on the community just east of the Oklahoma line.
"This one popped out of nowhere," said Polk County Sheriff Mike Oglesby.
The tornado killed at least three people and injured at least 30 others while winding its way through the town. As daylight broke Friday, pink insulation hung like cherry blossoms from the sheered branches of century-old maples. The roof of a two-story home sat atop the rubble that once was the floors beneath it, a set of women's clothes still hanging from a suspended closet rack.

Oglesby said search-and-rescue teams had combed through the city's downtown and a neighborhood just west that sustained the brunt of the storm without finding any other victims. The sheriff said he had no reports of anyone else missing.

"Right now, everything's good," Oglesby said.

Basic tornado safety rules call for people, when warned, to go to the lowest floor in a building and put as many walls as possible between themselves and outside.

A warning was posted at 7:24 p.m. Thursday night for areas north of Mena and another one went up for the community at 8:01 p.m. — nine minutes before it hit. Some communities cannot run their sirens continuously because their motors will burn up, said John Robinson, a National Weather Service forecaster.

"Everything was well-covered. We said everything was heading straight toward Mena. It's unfortunate yet," Robinson said from Mena, where initial storm surveys Friday showed the storm was "at least an EF3" on a scale of tornado damage, with winds at least 136-165 mph.

Some residents sought shelter in the Polk County Courthouse, where dispatchers became trapped immediately after the storm. A radio antenna fell over onto part of the courthouse during the storm, damaging its roof, but the beige brick structure appeared to withstand the twister.

But others, like Ken Butler, 40, said they initially dismissed the sirens. Butler could only huddle against a wall as the storm hit, his arms wrapped around an exposed gas pipe.

"The siren was going off in plenty of time, I just didn't take it serious enough," Butler said.

The storm plucked his neighbor's shotgun-style home off its foundation and tossed it about 20 feet away. Across the street, neighbor Edward Cross, 69, said he and his wife Nettie, 66, also didn't heed the sirens. Instead, he lifted the blinds of his back windows to look out toward the town's middle school and the courthouse.

At that point, Cross said the "big black cloud" loomed right in front of him.

"I didn't have time to go nowhere, I just grabbed a hold of the wall and held on," Cross said. The storm tore away a quarter of their home's roof.

His wife, smoking a cigarette, held up her hands to show how rattled she remained.